Topics Operations

Waiting Area

I’m opening my first pizzeria and am building a freestanding unit. My question is: is it worth the extra construction expense to add a lobby/waiting area? I’m going to have 32 four-top tables and eight six-person booths. With a resta...

Employee Theft Warning Signs

One of my first assignments as a consultant was to implement a turnaround for a group of pizzerias. They were hanging on by a thread. They had cashed in all of their CDs, 401ks and charged their credit cards to the max. I had made seve...

Get a Grip on Labor Costs

Right behind food cost is your second most expensive controllable expense: labor. Labor cost, or L/C, is usually referred to as a percentage of gross sales. I stayed on top of hourly labor like a hawk. My point of sale system served as my time clock ...

Cheese Prices

Did you ever get the feeling you were being overcharged for cheese? How does your supplier set the weekly price of cheese? How do the big chains buy their cheese? What does Block Plus stand for? Why does my cheese seem to be soft and wet sometimes an...

Common Number Problems

Independent operators get a failing grade on a huge issue: they do not have readable financial statements. For the moment, I won’t even consider the problem of getting information too late to be of any real help. Some operators just rely on the...

Cost of Delivery

History tends to repeat itself. Ten years ago, I wrote an article regarding my personal experiences dealing with soaring delivery costs and associated expenses. Big Dave’s Pizza had a sales mix that approximately half dine-in and half delivery....

Cross Train for Rushes

Big Dave Ostrander Crunch Time Remedy Cross training covers all your bases By Big Dave Ostrander Its late afternoon Friday. Within an hour, the phones will be ringing off the wall. Your best crew is checking and double checking stock levels and ...

Cross Training

The more your crew can do, the better your operation will run. In baseball, triple threats — players who can hit, field and run brilliantly — are rare gems. Entertainers who can sing, dance and act are called triple threats. In our world,...

Downsizing Pizza Sizes

It was a hot summer night. I was cruising with my friends. We were a carload of young guys, fresh out of high school, approaching a college campus, looking for a good time. The driver pulled into a drive thru burger place. He said “these burger...

Establish Measurements

Big Dave’s delivered a lot of orders. I’m convinced that one of the biggest reasons we dominated the delivery market in my area was that we measured the amount of time that elapsed from the phone call, in the oven, time out the door and time to t...
Topics Operations

Turning Tables

Have you ever participated in local festivals by setting up a food booth? Is it worth the trouble and expense? Do you actually make a profit, or is it just more to get your name out there in the community? I participate in those as often as I can. Th...

What to Advertise

There he sat, as expressionless as an iguana as I explained how an ad I would create for him would sink like a dropped anchor, even with a great headline, plenty of benefits and a no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. He would be pouring money aw...
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